


All That Glitters

by vatrixsta



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Challenge fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-02
Updated: 2009-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:21:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vatrixsta/pseuds/vatrixsta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Veronica could never imagine needing anything to remember Lilly by.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That Glitters

**Author's Note:**

> Challenge elements at the bottom! Written for vmlyric fic.

\--

Veronica tossed Logan his pants, the olive green khakis rolled up into a small projectile aimed squarely at his midsection. He grunted softly at the impact.

"I told you that you'd fall asleep," she hissed.

"It's not my fault that you put me into a sated, satisfied coma." He grinned wearing nothing but boxers and she resisted the urge to throw him back down on her bed.

"Let's see how big that grin is when my dad pulls his gun."

He snagged her wrist as she hurried by him, pulled her close and kissed her, long and hard.

"Your dad doesn't scare me," he said.

There was a knock on the door and Logan pushed Veronica away from him, dove over her bed, rolled off the edge and flattened himself close to the ground.

Keith leaned into her bedroom and Veronica had to look down at her body to confirm that she was at least wearing her bathrobe.

"Breakfast in ten minutes," Keith said.

"I'll be bright eyed and bushy tailed," she said brightly.

He left the door open as he walked away.

"Tell Logan he better be fully dressed when he comes to the table," he added from down the hall.

"Okay," Logan said, his voice muffled by the floor, "now I'm kind of scared."

~

When Lilly was fourteen, and Veronica had been her best friend for little more than a year, Celeste signed them up to appear in a play one of her many charities was putting on. "To keep them out of trouble," Celeste had said by way of explanation, but Lilly was not so adept at defying her mother at fourteen, and so they were excited at the prospect of Lilly finally having a real chance to be a star.

They went through weeks of rehearsal, giggling over costumes and cheesy lines and the utter lack of charm Lilly's leading man displayed. Opening night found Lilly dressed as a modern day Cleopatra, complete with wrists and ankles adorned in costume jewelry.

"Tacky, isn't it?" Lilly wiggled her foot at Veronica backstage, drawing attention to the audacious rhinestone anklet she wore.

"Totally," Veronica agreed, dressed more demurely as one of the chorus girls.

"They're so totally not going to care, though," Lilly said. "They will be far too overwhelmed by my star quality to notice jewelry."

After the show, they rode home in a limousine and Lilly refused to take her costume off. They spent the night in Lilly's bedroom taking quizzes in Cosmo and deciding which celebrity boyfriend they would each marry. In the morning, Lilly pressed the rhinestone anklet into Veronica's palm before she left.

"Something to remember me by," Lilly said with a smile, and even years later, Veronica would recall that she couldn't imagine needing anything to remember Lilly.

~

Sometimes, Logan fucks her from behind, her ass in the air, his legs holding her apart where both their knees press into the mattress and each other. She grips the sheets for leverage, and he grips her hips; she loses purchase and ends up with her face against soft cotton sheets as he pounds into her, and she pictures what he sees, her bare back and half a mile of long, blonde hair spread all around.

Veronica wonders if it's wrong to think of Lilly, to wonder if Logan's thinking of Lilly, and she wishes he'd say her name (or Lilly's), just once, just so she'd know. He doesn't though, and she doesn't ask him to, doesn't speak, really, just moans and enjoys it, because it feels so good, whoever he's thinking of.

He holds her after, and she knows it's her he's holding, her he spoons up around and asks about her day, or her plans for the weekend, or the rest of her life. She doesn't think he and Lilly ever spooned or talked about their future in hushed whispers, but she doesn't know, and the kicker is, the whole Logan thing isn't even the hardest part of Lilly being dead.

~

"Okay, you realize we're not talking about weeding out a few useless items, right? There is no way on the good Lord's earth I'm helping you move even half of this crap."

"Wallace, for the last time, I'm living at home," Veronica said as she sorted through an old box of scarves. "You won't be moving any of this stuff."

"Come on, V, it's not gonna last," Wallace said. "You'll be chilling with me in the dorms, seeing how sweet the free life can be, and pretty soon, calling to tell your dad when you'll be home won't seem so fun."

"You know what's fun?" Veronica stuffed an old sweater around the edges of a breakable lamp. "Not paying rent of any kind. It _rules_."

"We'll see," Wallace in that way he had that made Veronica want to punch him. "So what's with the spring cleaning then? If you haven't noticed, it's July, and it's too hot to breathe, let alone whatever it is you're doing."

"Out with the old!" she declared, and dumped a chest filled with old costume jewelry onto the bed. Most of it was ugly, and not at all her taste; some of it had belonged to her mother. She didn't need any of it, and the rummage sale had been her dad's brilliant idea to give her enough extra cash to hopefully cut back on a few shifts at the Java Hut come fall.

"Take it all away," she said after awhile, collapsed against her bed. "I can't look at it anymore. I need sustenence." She gave Wallace a beseeching look. "Friend, will you fetch me junk food and carbonated sugar?"

"That's best friend, and don't you forget it."

"Not in a million years," Veronica said, and truly felt she meant it. Once sated, they hauled everything outside and set up folding tables around the apartment complex. A few of the neighbors had gotten involved, and soon the courtyard was filled with people. It took Veronica by surprise when Logan reached his hand around her waist to pick something up off the table in front of her.

"Fifty cents, huh?" He held the glittering rhinestones aloft.

"Someone will buy it," Veronica said. "There's always someone to buy some piece of crap."

"You got this from Lilly," Logan said.

That did surprise Veronica, and she was not accustomed to the people she knew saying things that she didn't expect.

"A long time ago," she said.

"Did you ever look at the inscription?"

It was the most logical question, and it threw her completely. Veronica leaned around his arm to gape at the tiny letters his thumb was underlining. C.K.

"Celeste Kane?"

"You didn't know they were real, did you?"

She could do nothing but shake her head dumbly. "She told me they were fake."

"Lilly used to say a lot of things," Logan said, but he didn't sound bitter about it anymore. Veronica wondered why it didn't make her happier.

"I can't believe I was going to sell them for fifty cents. Logan, this could pay for college."

"I can't believe you never noticed they weren't rhinestones," Logan said, and a fond smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Veronica Mars, girl detective, can't spot a genuine diamond?"

Veronica thought about it, thought about all the things in Lilly she'd never seen, good and bad. She thought about how much she'd idolized Lilly, worshipped her, adored her, how even now, knowing everything she did, she still longed to clothe herself in the glory of Lilly's love, the one place no one was really meant to dwell.

"I guess I just never looked at it close enough," Veronica said, and tucked the anklet into Logan's pocket. "Keep it safe for me?"

"Safe and sound," he promised, and kissed her cheek softly. He put his hand in his pocket as he walked away, and she wondered if he was feeling the weight of the anklet in his palm, worrying his thumb over smooth diamonds, thinking about Lilly. Sometimes when she looked at him she was trapped in a past where he still belonged to Lilly, where _she_ still belonged to Lilly, and it seemed wrong that Veronica should love him as much as she did and still doubt them so much.

But other times, when she felt strong enough, she could almost break free of it.

"Logan," Veronica called out.

He turned around and raised an inquisitive eyebrow her direction. She cocked her head at him, beckoned him back. Logan sauntered back over to her, smiling a little uncertainly; his smile grew wider when she stood one her toes to press a kiss to his mouth, and he actually giggled a little when she slipped her hand inside his pocket. His expression grew confused when it emerged with the anklet.

"Don't trust me, Mars?"

"I trust you too much," she shot back, and turned away from him. "Fennel!"

Wallace glanced across the yard. "I'm with a customer, V!"

"Catch!" she yelled, and hurled the anklet at him. He caught it with one hand and looked at her like she was crazy. "Keep it," she said, "to remember me."

He looked at her a little strangely, but he was used to her, and he made a big show of slipping the anklet onto his wrist. It was oversized still, but it fit, and almost didn't look out of place.

"What do I get to remember you by?" Logan asked, and batted his eyes at her.

"That's easy," she said, and bumped her hip against his as she picked up a box of old clothes. "You just get me."

~

Veronica would not be the person she was today if Lilly hadn't died. She would still be a supporting player in the Lilly Kane show, important to the proceedings, but by no means the main feature. There would be no tough talking detective, no saving and being saved by Logan, no BFF bond with Wallace.

She regretted nothing of her life, but she used to worry that she would change everything to fill that missing piece of her heart where Lilly used to live; she worried that Lilly still mattered that much. Now, Veronica worries that someday she won't, and Lilly will finally fade away for good, and Veronica will need something that sparkles like diamonds to remember her.

~

END

My elements were: a rhinestone studded anklet, and "in your glory and your love" from Save Me


End file.
